Scotland's Transnational Heritage

This volume – a range of very interesting essays based on a wide-ranging project embracing academics, museums and others in the field – is a lively, imaginative and revealing contribution towards rethinking Scotland’s past [...] The Scottish past is more complex, more interesting – and much more global – than we once believed. Yet, this is only one aspect of an intellectual process that is seeping across the entire British Isles. The editors, as well as contributors, are to be congratulated for revealing the past as not so much a foreign country as a variety of foreign countries. -- James Walvin * Family & Community History *
The fundamental question posed by this book is one asked by artist Alberta Whittle at the beginning of her foreword: "How do we decide which stories to tell?" (p.xv). More broadly, the question is how galleries, museums and heritage collections choose which stories to tell with, and through, their collections. In these, still, early days of decolonising collections, this book brings into focus the legacies of empire and slavery in Scotland’s heritage, seeking to identify, and correct, the erasure of a transnational heritage that has buried racialised trauma beneath the more palatable narratives told until now, with global protests such as Black Lives Matter lending urgency to such matters […] The value of this book is its depth of research, its openness and its direct engagement with Scotland’s museums, galleries and heritage collections. That engagement has already facilitated different approaches to public exhibitions and displays. It is also a valuable opportunity to acknowledge difficult histories, expose hidden traumas and tell different stories. -- Beth Williamson * Scottish Art News - Fleming Collection *
This long overdue book feels like a challenge to the stories we have come to expect from our national heritage collections. The wealth of research from this sprawling and generous cohort of writers is insistently changing what stories are being told in Scotland and crucially who gets to lead on telling those stories. -- Alberta Whittle, University of Johannesburg
Drawing together analyses and interventions from a range of contributors representing academic, heritage institution and creative backgrounds, this book offers a crucial re-thinking of the stories of Scotland within local, national and imperial contexts. -- Leith Davis, Simon Fraser University